Filmmakers are usually the most politic of people, loath to criticise each other's work or damn their collaborators with anything other than the most fulsome of praise. It's rare for the gloves to come off quite as ferociously, or as publicly, as in the Watchmen row over the past days. Zack Snyder is the latest to weigh in, rebutting criticism of his Alan Moore adaptation from Joel Silver, the property's erstwhile producer, and firing back at Silver's pick of director, Terry Gilliam.

Snyder, immensely proud of his take on the iconic graphic novel and afforded an instant right of reply by his 300: Rise Of An Empire press duties, wasn't taking those comments lying down. "If you read the Gilliam ending, it's completely insane," he said, suggesting that the third act that re-engineered the entire plot would have had the fans "storming the castle". A Munchausen castle, presumably.

"I made Watchmen for myself," Snyder continued. "It's probably my favourite movie that I've made. I love the graphic novel and I really love everything about the movie. I made it because I knew that the studio would have made the movie anyway and they would have made it crazy. So finally I made it to save it from the Terry Gilliams of this world."

For Snyder the project was "a labour of love", so his response is understandable, if not necessary tactful. The original comments, lest we forget, didn't come from Gilliam, who has never commented on the Snyder Watchman, but Silver.

Unusually, all three parties have films to promote, so the oxygen of publicity is keeping this mini-dispute burning. Next to the podium is Gilliam, soon to be doing The Zero Theorem interviews, so expect his take on it soon. In the meantime, head to Huffington Post for the full Snyder interview.

Snyder was faithful to what was a 12-part series. He did a great job of adapting the source material. I think he just means he doesn't want people (The 'Gilliams' of the quote) to do a bad job. Remember how bad V For Vendetta was? More

I find a total mystery why he was chosen to direct MAN OF STEEL and now, BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN (eta 2016), which is really JUSTICE LEAGUE in disguise given the stuff we've been hearing about it. In the words of Blackadder, Zack's brain is as empty as a eunuch's underpants. More

Watchmen is a movie that doesn't really work. It's a bit of a mess, Snyder's Sucker Punch had the same problem. It was where Snyder started to go off the boil for me after his brilliant Dawn of the Dead and 300 movies. It was incredibly cruel to put the boot into poor Terry Gilliam like that when he hadn't started the whole argument off. Snyder went down in my estimation after reading that. Oh, and, Man of Steel sucked. More

"For all of you who are not in London searching for the elusive Zero Theorem bus, here's a puzzle: Who are "The Terry Gilliam's of the world"? Apparently the film of The Watchmen was made to save it from them. Who are they? What threat to the world do they pose? Can we stop them before they destroy other films of graphic novels?" More

So Gilliam's version would have ended on essentially a cop-out? Wouldn't this have been missing the point? Moore know what he wanted to say with the whole 'millions dead to save billions' (whether its a squid or not). Personally, think Snyder nailed it. More

Watchmen was f*cking brilliant on a massive screen at the West End, I went to see it twice. The bomb works so much better than the dumb squid. The only downside was the godawful sex scene, but I can live with that. More